Interview Hebe de Champeaux in Leidsch Dagblad
Boat trip June 11th 2023
Boat trip June 11th 2023
The Leiden English Choir, which started out as an informal carol-singing group at Leiden University’s English Department, celebrated its 50th anniversary in style: the choir performed a magnificent concert together with two guest choirs, Chór Astolabium from Toruń (Poland), and the City of Oxford Choir from England.
The programme featured two world premieres: “To see a world” by the LEC’s conductor, Hebe de Champeaux, and “The birds of the air” by composer Wilko Brouwers. The theme of the concert was the relationship between man and nature, and our conductor discussed this in an interview with the Leidsch Dagblad.
On the day after the concert we took a boat trip through Leiden with our guests from Poland and England – and of course we all sang at the tops of our voices, accompanied by accordionists – what a great weekend!
Christmas matinee
Christmas matinee Leiden English Choir. Marekerk, December 18, 2021
It was a pleasure to be able to give our traditional Christmas concert! Supported by Anna Marieke Zijlstra on oboe and Takashi Mizumoto on piano, and conducted by Hebe de Champeaux, we were able to present an attractive program. The program included Three Nativity Carols by Paulus, White Winter Hymnal by Pecknold with body-percussion and a jazzy performance of ‘Rudolf, the Red-nosed Reindeer’. The audience could softly hum along to classics such as ‘Stille Nacht’ and ‘Noel’. There was limited seating in the church, but hundreds of people around the world were able to enjoy the concert via a live stream. The Leids Dagblad wrote this about it:
Comments from the audience:
“Very beautiful and professional”
“The music was beautiful, how wonderful the men in Rudolf! And the percussion in white winter hymnal, really impressive perfect!”
“…as if angels were singing.” Want to join the choir? Join us
Performance on July 11, 2021
Performance on July 11, 2021
After a year and a half, finally another performance, together with the children’s choir ZingZang, on the Pieterskerhof in Leyden.
LEC in a cow shed
LEC in a cow shed
In June we could rehearse live, but Corona proof, in a former cow shed.
Corona – latest information
COVID-19
After months of uncertainty we finally have specific guidance from the national health agency (RIVM). The Dutch Choir Network (Koornetwerk Nederland) has als created and updated a protocol for choir rehearsals. See links below – at this point this information is only available in Dutch.
https://lci.rivm.nl/koren-zangensembles
https://koornetwerk.nl/protocol/
Online rehearsals
Online rehearsals
A premier during lockdown – our first virtual choir numbers! We didn’t let the COVID lockdown stop us from making music.